Monday, December 9, 2013

The Good Old Days

It’s hard to believe, but looking
back years from now, these will be the good old days. Even though right now it’s
been a rough week, a tough month and a difficult year.

The problem is this – we seem
incapable of accurately assessing this present moment in its proper context.
Instead, we see it only through the lens of our tenacious discontent, our
single-minded focus on what’s wrong instead of what’s right, and our escapist,
fantasy-addled mind. Only much later, in retrospect, do we see how magical and
spot-on perfect this moment was. The trick is this – how do we learn to see
this present moment as miraculous and perfect while we’re still in it?

Today you feel old. Years from
now you’ll look back and marvel at how young you were back then. Today you feel
stressed. Years from now you’ll look back and marvel at how easy life was back
then, when you had all your strengths and capacities. Today you feel scared.
Years from now you’ll look back and marvel at how blessed your life was, how
you were always surrounded by protecting angels who defended you against the
worst and opened doors to the best.

It’s important to reflect on these
things. If we don’t examine the process by which we arrive at our assessments
and judgments, we fall prey to them. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is
not worth living.”

In the field of psychology we
learn more and more about how the mind forms its view of the world. It turns
out we have a strong tendency to exaggerate the negative and overlook the
positive. This negativity bias, as it’s called, distorts our assessment of our
current situation. Only year later, looking back, is the proper balance restored.
Our practiced capacity to visualize every possible negative outcome turns the
present moment and the near future into a treacherous mine field. When we
creatively imagine negative outcomes we think we’re just being clever and
perceptive when in fact we’re not being clever at all – we’re simply caught up
in an unconscious distortion. This is why people resist reform no matter how
untenable the current situation is. The apocalyptic handwringing over the
Affordable Care Act is a perfect example. If you leave out Obama’s name and poll
people about the specific components of Obamacare one by one, a large majority
of Americans support them. When the same people are asked if they approve of
Obamacare they of course say no. It’s new, so it must be bad. They see every
potential problem, and none of the benefits.

There is a simple explanation for
this. It seems evolution has selected this cognitive trait for us. Over the
last 9,000 generations, (300,000 years), the Homo sapiens that worried the most
lived the longest. If you believe there’s a crouching saber-toothed tiger
behind every boulder you’re less likely to be surprised by one, and more likely
to pass on your genes. If all you do is pick daisies and wax poetic about the
pretty, puffy clouds, you’re lunch, and die childless. In other words, natural
selection favors negative thinking.

But now that there are no more
saber-toothed tigers, what are we to do with this negativity bias? Become aware
of it so that we can override it. But moving from unconsciousness to
consciousness isn’t easy.

All freedom, whether political or
psychological, has to be deliberately chosen and fought for. The first step is
identifying the problem. We’ve done that. Now comes the hard part – learning to
see with new eyes. But maybe it isn’t that hard. Maybe that’s just our
negativity bias talking.

What if we allow it to be easy?
What if we simply come fully into this now moment and forsake all future and
past thinking? What if we come out of the thought stream altogether and find
ourselves simply aware, breathing, noticing without judgment? Instead of
labeling every event, naming every feeling, and categorizing every experience
what if we practiced choiceless awareness – the simple, bias-free apprehension
of all that is, as it is? What sounds like a tall order turns out to be a
simple, natural thing, an immediate knowing outside the bounds of our normal
cognitive circuitry with its all too familiar negativity bias. To see again as
a child, not through a glass darkly, but with sparkling clarity and immediacy,
to have what Zen Buddhism calls beginner’s mind, to walk again in the Garden of
Eden and leave behind the machinations that inhibit our innate spirituality.
This is what’s at stake – in a word, everything.

This isn’t just a onetime thing.
It’s going to take practice. It’s a decision that’s going to have to be made
over and over again. Passing inspiration and fleeting lucidity are nice, but
persistence and vigilance are far more rewarding. A lifetime, indeed ten
thousand lifetimes, of negativity bias cannot be undone with a snap of the
fingers and a short-lived intention. We need to wear a groove even deeper than
our negativity. That’s going to take some doing.

There’s one destination, but a
thousand roads that get there. Here are some concrete suggestions and behaviors
that will heighten your choiceless awareness of the present moment.

Stop and breathe.

Spend time with animals.

Get outside under a big sky.

Walk without a destination or
schedule.

Read good poetry.

Stop isolating yourself from the
messiness of love.

Forgive yourself.

Learn the high art of meditation.

Listen to the music of your willingness,
dance to the rhythm of your enthusiasm.